Your Everyday Art World

Looking broadly at network structures within the contemporary art world, Relyea offers a discerning assessment of how art practices have evolved alongside changing global markets, economies, and infrastructures. Relyea charts the shift from museums to platforms, from a select few art cities to a transnational and peripatetic art world, keeping an eye as closely on market structures and business theory as on the practices and material objects of the artists. This charting, while dense with theory, still manages to move with ease between all of Relyea's sources. Rather than striking out against neoliberalism or praising the inclusivity of a global art world, the text builds a nuanced appraisal in which the creative connections of the university system and bricolage sculptures (among many other contemporary turns) all gesture toward opportunities to "persevere in the face of our present-day onslaught of catastrophes as usual." That Relyea manages to build this examination from a wide lens, taking such a sweeping range of information and artists into account, pushes what could be a topic of limited interest into the realm of compelling theory, provocative while resisting any easy conclusions and ultimately finding insights that extend beyond the world of contemporary art. B&w illus. (Oct.)